07.14.09
Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 3:40 pm by Gordon Flagg
A delegation of directors of provincial-level libraries in China attended the ALA Annual Conference after spending 10 days at a training program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Mortenson Center.
They’re taking part in a continuing professional education program covering library management, public services, and digital library development. Following the conference they’ll be traveling in groups of two to various libraries around the U.S. for one-week visits.
Back row, from left: Fang Jiazhong, Wang Huijun, Wang Jialing, Kong Dechao, Liu Xiaoqing, Wang Shuiqiao. Front row: Jin Zhijun, Wang Xiaowen, Wu Aiyun.
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Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 3:09 pm by Gordon Flagg
“I am a library slut,” admitted mystery author Lisa Scottoline. “That means I will go to any library that will have me,” to give thanks to librarians, who changed the direction of her life.
Scottoline, an Edgar Award-winner for her 1994 novel Final Appeal (HarperTorch), ebulliently told her Monday-morning Auditorium Speaker Series audience that she grew up in a household that only had one book—TV Guide. It wasn’t until she went to her school library that she found out that not only did some books have hard covers, she joked, but “they didn’t all have Lucille Ball on them.”
Soon Scottoline moved on to public libraries, which she said were “like hardware stores for girls: You spend hours in them, you get lost, and you don’t mind.” She still vividly remembers her orange library card, even its number—3935. Testifying to the “profound love and gratitude” she has for libraries and librarians, Scottoline recalled, “That card said to me, ‘I read, therefore I matter.’”
Scottoline said she started writing in the 1980s “because I wasn’t seeing the women in books that I was seeing in life.” At that time, women in fiction were still in subordinate roles, she observed, “still the Della Streets to Perry Mason.” “I’m writing about, strong interesting women,” Scottoline said, such as the members of the all-woman law firm Rosato and Associates.
“What I’m trying to do is very much like what you’re doing,” she told the assembled librarians. When people pick up a book, she explained, they’re looking for a connection to someone like them, “and that’s why what you do is so essential—because you’re making a connection. What you do is to connect us to each other. I don’t think there is a greater good in this world.”
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Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 12:01 pm by Leonard Kniffel
To my way of thinking, Tracy Kidder is a famous author—who’s not famous enough. I haven’t read all his books (and I do intend to), but House remains for me the right book at the right time. In 1985, this true story of the construction of a home in Massachusetts hit me just as I had beome a homeowner, and Kidder’s descriptions of the evolution of the design, the negotiations with builders, the groundbreaking, and the roof-raising really hit home, so to speak. But what really got to me was that it was all focused on the human aspirations and struggles behind the project. It’s probably one of the first pieces of what is now commonly called “creative nonfiction” that I read, and it marked a gradual shift in my reading (and writing) patterns from fiction and poetry to nonfiction.
Before Kidder’s Monday afternoon speech at ALA, I had an opportunity to chat with him about his new book, Strength in What Remains, the true story of Deogratias, a young man from Burundi in central Africa. In 1993 he was forced onto a terrifying journey, beginning with a six-months-long escape on foot from ethnic violence in Burundi and genocide in Rwanda. He winds up in New York City, where it sometimes seemed his troubles had only just begun.
Asked what his message to librarians would be during his Auditorium Speakers program, Kidder joked, “I’ve got a new book. I think it’s a pretty good book. That’s my message, basically!” But he went on to say that he thought of librarians as “great tools for curing ignorance.” The role of libraries in his career has been “an intermittent role, although it seems to me I’ve used them all my life. And, of course, in college they were absolutely crucial, but they were also a great place to meet girls,” he laughed.
“One of the things I think we may lose in this new electronic age is the lucky find,” Kidder said. ”I’m just old fashioned, perhaps, but it’s partly the presence of the physical books themselves that I find important but also the lucky associations that you make. You go to one part of the library looking for a certain thing and you find something else that you want even more sitting two shelves down, and I don’t know how you can substitute that.” He also called libraries “tremendously important culutral centers.”
“The protagonist of my new book is a great lover of libraries,” Kidder added. “They practically saved his life and certainly part of his spiritual recovery took place in libraries.”
Kidder talked more about his new book in the Auditorium Speakers series, explaining his approach to the topic. “I don’t want to make Berundi exotic,” he said, “I want to make it comprehensible.” Writing about a thing is a way of understanding it, he suggested, and among the most difficult things in the world to understand are “tragedy and injustice that are preventable.” War, he said, is “the most amazing human stupidity of all.”
Asked about his next writing project, Kidder said that when he takes on a book like Strength in What Remains, “it always feels like I’m jumping out a window and I don’t know what story I’m on.”
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Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 11:53 am by Greg Landgraf
As my final bit of Annual coverage (though with other AL staffers also blogging, a few more stories may be forthcoming), I’d like to share my now-traditional review of relevant—and wholly irrelevant—quotes.
“We have everything Strom Thurmond ever owned, including his pajamas.” – Emily Gore, Clemson University Libraries head of digital initiatives, discussing the library’s political materials
“Even Microsoft is learning. Which is surprising to me sometimes.” – Mick Jacobsen, Skokie (Ill.) Public Library, on the public sector’s discovery that people are more interested in information than the resources it comes from
“It’s just Eric. Say hello to everyone at ALA. Surprise!”—Eric Frierson, education and political science librarian at the Unviersity of Texas at Arlington, using Meebo to surprise his library’s reference desk during his presentation.
“For me it was more fun doing banned book readings than go to the Playboy Super Bowl Party.” –Former Playboy Enterprises CEO Christie Hefner, during her Opening General Session speech.
“Who could you partner with to make having an dusing a library card really cool?”-Hefner
“You must play a role in defining what privacy means in this new world. You are on the front lines. That means you must hold the line, but it also means you have the opportunity to educate.”-Hefner
“As the courts have ruled, the fact that protected speech may be offensive to sum can never justify its repression.”-Hefner
“Nothing’s too small to make a difference is the mantra of my show.”—Simple Living host Wanda Urbanska, during her Auditorium Speaker Series speech.
“In 20 years of carrying a travel mug everywhere I go, I’ve saved 7,000 cups from landfills. One person came up to me and said ‘If I don’t have my travel mug with me, I don’t deserve coffee.’”-Urbanska
“Welcome to the Demco Library… cart… thingy.”-Author/Illustrator Mo Willems, introducing the Book Cart Drill Team World Championships.
“If a team is caught in drug testing—and those will be multiple choice—the second-place team will have to take those same drugs.”-Willems laying down the event’s strict steroid policy.
“I’d like to see a picture of a chair right now.” – Attendee at a full-past-capacity session, after the presenter offered a photo of cupcakes as the last slide in her presentation.
“It is happening. Can we afford to ignore this? And more importantly, imagine the potential if we don’t.”—Eric Miller, president of Zepheira, on linked data.
“You could not have picked a more appropriate speaker today. Because guess what? Can you believe I was married in a library?”-The Soloist author Steve Lopez, during his Closing Session speech.
The Philadelphia library system is full service. You can get married there, and you can also get divorced.”-Lopez, noting that in the film version of The Soloist, his character was divorced. (In real life, Lopez remains happily married.)
“I’ll tell you about the book, and why it makes a great one city one book selection.”-Lopez, on The Soloist.
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Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 11:32 am by Greg Landgraf
Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist and author of The Soloist, told the Closing Session crowd how he met Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, and how their relationship grew and the story developed into the book.
“The deal with writing a column is, it’s like having a pet monster that’s always hungry,” Lopez said. “You have to keep finding more stories.” He met Ayers, a homeless musician with schizophrenia, while in downtown Los Angeles checking on another story lead. Ayers was playing a violin that was missing two strings, and on his shopping cart, he had written “Little Walt Disney Concert Hall”—a reference to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which houses the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Ayers wasn’t asking for money. When Lopez asked why he was playing there, amidst the sounds of car horns and sirens, Ayers pointed at the statue of Beethoven in nearby Pershing Square and said that it inspired him.
At that point, Lopez said, he didn’t even know if the story would develop into a single column. But he continued meeting with Ayers, and discovered that he had studied music at the prestigious Juilliard School. And when he called Harry Barnhoff, Ayers’ childhood music teacher in Cleveland, “I could hear Mr. Barnhoff weeping on the other end of the line,” at what had become of one of his most talented students.
“I wrote the column not really realizing what I had,” Lopez said. “That column connected because when readers saw the story, they saw a ‘There but for the grace of God’ element.” In the following days, boxes came into Lopez’s office: six violins, two cellos, and a series of other instruments including French horn, trumpet, and piano.
Lopez went on to describe his concerns that Ayers’ new instruments would make him a target for thieves and violence; how Ayers was eventually persuaded to take an apartment in the Lamp Community, an organization that helps people with severe mental illness move into homes; how he and Ayers were invited to attend a concert at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, how they took a road trip to San Francisco, where Ayers was honored by the National Association on Mental Illness; how Ayers reconnected with Juilliard classmate Yo-Yo Ma, and how his relationship with Ayers continues today.
He also shared his outrage at the state of treatment for mental illness in this country. “Why is it that on every Saturday morning there’s a 10K Race for the Cure for everything except schizophrenic paranoia?” he asked. “There’s still a stigma. That stigma means it’s okay for a Juilliard student or anyone else to wander the streets mumbling. Now that I cared about Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, it wasn’t okay.”
Lopez called his relationship with Ayers a gift, and expressed his hope that attitudes would change out of the story. And he recognized that Ayers was the individual that could make that possible. “If I were writing columns on mental illness, no one would have read them. But here I had a story” that resonated with readers.
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Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 9:16 am by Sean Fitzpatrick
A packed meeting room awaited a panel of techie librarians to address the question of whether Library 2.0 has lived up to its promise at July 14 LITA and the Internet Resources Services Interest Group session “The Ultimate Debate: Has Library 2.0 fulfilled its promise?” The panel couldn’t exactly agree on what Library 2.0 was, let alone whether it’s fulfilled its promise, but traditional ways of thinking may not even be sufficient to judge Lib2.0 effectiveness.
Audience of conference attendees watches moderator Roy Tennent and panelists David Lee King, Meredith Farkas, Michael Porter, and Cindi Trainor discuss the Library 2.0 promise.
Moderator Roy Tennant said that describing Library 2.0 was much like the tale of the blind men touching different parts of an elephant to learn what it was: by touching different parts of the elephant, each had a radically different description from the others. “The Library 1.0 Committee is still out on what the Library 2.0 promise is,” joked one panelist, noting that using Lib1.0 criteria to discuss Lib2.0 values misses the point.
“The first report I gave on Twitter effectiveness was a printout of the happy tweets and the angry tweets,” said panalist Michael Porter. He went on to say–and the panel agreed–that traditional metrics, such as traffic counts, circulation counts, and so forth are insufficient when it comes to gauging Lib2.0 effectiveness. Lib2.0 needs metrics that can track patron engagement.
The panel agreed that these Lib2.0 tools–blogs, wikis, widgets, social networking, and so forth–are usually free or very cheap but still take a lot of staff time implement effectively. Meredith Farkas noted that 2.0 librarians are still doing the same things they’ve always done at their jobs, and more. David Lee King, who admits that he often stays up late at night to get extra work done, agrees but suggests that librarians who say they have no time for Lib2.0 initiatives have bad time management. “If there’s enough time to push a book cart around synchronized to music,” he snarked, “you prrroooobably have enough time to use these technologies.”
“You may not have signed up for this job, but it’s the job you have. And the job is changing,” said Porter.
King added that if libraries are spending so much time practicing for book cart drill teams, they should put videos of the drill teams on YouTube for marketing, and even archiving, purposes. “Use these tools to work it, work it, work it,” he urged. King addressed managers in the room directly, with a charge to let their staff “go with” the technology.
Although the panel advocates for the power of these tools in libraries, their points were tempered with a sense of focus on the library’s mission. Farkas remarked that libraries should use Lib2.0 technologies to fill a need. “Technology is not a magic wand,” she said.
Uncertain of the actual productive uses of Lib2.0 technology, one audience member asked, “Isn’t it all just marketing?” Panelist Cindi Trainor agreed that marketing for the library is one good use of Lib2.0 technology, but there are other parts, she said: collaboration, connecting, sharing, and putting out half-baked ideas and seeing what people say. Trainor highlighted the power of using these tools for feedback and two-way communication. “It’s not just a wooden box in the corner that says ’suggestions.’”
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